


Boats Don't Kill People (Icebergs Do)

by Re_Adrienne



Category: South Park
Genre: Abundant discomfort, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - High School, Avoiding the Problem, But things are complicated because trauma, Did I mention that enough, Dysfunctional Family, Everything's fucked up but it's fine, Falling in love instead of fixing your life trope, Fucking out your problems trope, Idk why Ruby doesn't have a character tag but she's in it too, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's A Process, LOL wait I am that trope that's all I write, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Ok let's go, References to Drugs, Some weird shit probably happens, THEY'RE ALL TRYING SO HARD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, You've been warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23340520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Re_Adrienne/pseuds/Re_Adrienne
Summary: In fourth grade, Craig sees Kenny’s eyes for the first time, up close. They’re a ghostly light blue, and they hover in the dark above him at night when he can’t sleep.It's funny how some things change, and others don't.
Relationships: Kenny McCormick/Craig Tucker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

It’s the last month of fourth grade. Craig is in line for lunch behind Clyde and Token, considering picking up a bran muffin or one of the assorted fruits stacked haphazardly in a wicker basket, and Kenny steps into line behind him. The orange jacket is too large, and Craig can only see dirtied blonde hair and purple swelling around one eye from beneath the drawstring hood. Kenny begins shoving apples in his pockets and hiding bananas down the front of his parka, wrapping brown mini muffins in white napkins and stuffing them in his pants. Craig quietly files away the stiffness of Kenny’s posture and notes sunken cheeks with clinical distance. Craig waits for Kenny to acknowledge him, but he doesn’t. He grabs one last banana and, before he steps back out of line, Craig sees Kenny’s eyes for the first time, up close. They’re a ghostly light blue, and they hover in the dark above him at night when he can’t sleep.

… 

It’s been a few days since the blizzard. The snow and wind shut down South Park for three days straight, and it’s the first day of school resuming. It’s senior year of high school. Craig is without his friends today. Clyde, Tweek, Jimmy, and Token are all out of town until tomorrow for a video game convention. It’s unusual for Craig to be at an empty table during lunch. It kind of kills his appetite. He overhears Kenny’s name at the next table and puts his ham sandwich back on the tray to eavesdrop on Kyle and Stan.

Stan has his hat pulled down over his ears and his black fringe sticking out awkwardly over his eyebrows. He and Kyle are the only two at their table because half the school has not braved it outside yet, and it irks Craig how they still take up the big table and sit at their same spots across and diagonal from each other as if the whole group were there anyway. Kyle has taken his hat off, leaving his red hair to corkscrew out while he juggles eating something that looks mushy and vaguely brown and reading out of his notebook.

“You hear from Kenny?” Stan asks, and flicks a lump of half-frozen mashed potatoes off his fork and over the edge of the table.

“What about him?” Kyle scribbles something on the paper and takes a bite.

“He sent me a weird text, didn’t make sense.”

“Dude.”

“Should we check on him?”

Kyle shakes his head ‘no’ without looking up, and continues writing.

“He’ll come around when he’s ready,” Kyle says.

Stan frowns at the table and pushes his tray away from him.

Kyle is wrong. Kenny hardly ever ‘comes around’ and, if he does, it’s always too late.

Craig has begun to think he knows Kenny better than Stan and Kyle do. 

Kenny drops his younger sister, Karen, off at Craig’s house every Friday. Kenny never comes inside to eat, but sometimes when it’s cold outside and Karen doesn’t want Kenny to freeze, with some persuasion, he’ll come inside for tea. Sometimes, they all sit at the kitchen table. Karen tries to chew the sandwich Ruby makes for her slowly, and Kenny sips the tea Craig makes for him while staring at him over the rim of his cup. Sometimes, Kenny pulls Craig aside and shares his thoughts with him quietly so the girls can’t hear; he gets the occasional quiet, “Karen needs to stay here tonight,” or, “can I borrow a couple cans of soup?” Craig never denies him, when he asks. Kenny tries to shoulder everything for his sister; Craig is always waiting for Kenny to ask him to share the weight. On those days, while Kenny is grabbing his parka off the kitchen chair to leave, Karen’s eyes swell up with something like guilt.

When she leaves, Craig sits on the couch and listens to Ruby talk. He doesn’t think she’s talking to him so much as just needs to say what she knows, to share the burden of what she hears from Karen. He learns more from these talks than from what Kenny ever tells him. And Craig listens diligently, and remembers all of it. 

The cafeteria has begun to quiet down. Lunch is ending. Craig takes his hands out of his jacket pockets and picks his sandwich back up. He chews slowly. The meat is too cold to taste. All of South Park is too cold. This morning, walking to school, he kept seeing exploded headlights on parked cars, glazed white and banked in with snow, crowded against the sidewalk. It looked like the cold caused the lights to compress and combust from the inside. Craig isn’t sure that’s even possible, but something about the way the whole area has gone stiff with winter makes the cold seem all-consuming, like God and science exploded up into white dust, and it’s all coming down in magical thinking.

Craig wishes he had Kenny’s phone number. He could ask Ruby, who could get it from Karen, but he never does. He’s pissed that Kenny isn’t at school. He’s pissed that Kenny McCormick is never where he’s supposed to be, and how, when he is, he doesn’t stay there long. He’s pissed that sometimes Kenny drops his sister off on their driveway and never comes close to the house, and that Craig has to watch him look longingly at the front door like someone resigned to pain and walk back down the street until he’s an orange thumbprint on the sidewalk. More than anything, Craig hates Kenny McCormick’s back.

… 

The house is quiet because it’s Thursday and Ruby likes to be out with friends on Thursday, and their parents are permanently out of town on business. They say they work in real estate and that they have to go where the work is, but property is everywhere, and it seems like they only work in California these days. The walls are blue and unadorned except for the wall by the stairs, which is white. The stairs end in front of his sister Ruby’s room. The door is closed, so he doesn’t know if she’s home from school yet.

Craig drops his backpack in his bedroom closet. He sits on his bed by the window, leaning his head on the glass. It chills his cheek, but he tilts his head to press into it more because he’s hot from walking. He tucks his hands into his hoodie. He watches his breath fog the glass, then evaporate. When each breath clears, he watches the street. 

There are no cars yet because the ice and snow are still thick over the road, and South Park is compact enough to walk to a grocery store from most neighborhoods. The bus isn’t running yet—it’ll take a day or so of maintenance—and it occurs to Craig that this may be why Kenny wasn’t in school today, that maybe his house is too far from school to walk—but he doubts it.

Craig imagines he can hear his parents arguing downstairs over the temperature inside. His father keeps trying to turn the heat up a couple degrees, and his mother keeps trying to turn it back down.

Try a blanket, she says.

Craig thinks about a house without heat. He imagines frost forming on the carpet and daggered icicles growing out of the ceiling above his bed. He parts his lips against the window and exhales, and the cold fogs the glass from the outside in.

Ruby comes into his room, pulling her sleeves over her hands and glaring at the carpet. 

“Karen’s brother is outside. He’s pretty out of it,” she says.

Craig stares at his sister, slowly comprehending.

He grabs another jacket and walks downstairs.

The sun is lowering over the mountains. Craig thinks it’s not so much a sunset as a scale of grey, the sky sliding off the edge of the earth into asphalt. 

He finds Kenny sprawled out stomach-up on the frozen hood of Craig’s car, smoking a cigarette. Craig’s car is a mustang 5.0 from the eighties. He bought it because it has a roll cage inside. The hood isn’t very large, so Kenny’s legs hang off the edge. He’s not wearing his orange parka, just a faded black shirt that Craig recognizes as one of three that Kenny cycles through. His skin is bone white, and his eyes are open wide beneath a tangle of pale hair, blue turning stone grey where the light still reaches. He does look out of it. He stares up and up like he doesn’t even know where he is or why he’s breathing.

Craig stands at the front of the car and doesn’t know what to say. He waits for Kenny to acknowledge him or tell him why he’s at his house, lying on his car. Kenny drops his right arm to the side at a right angle and Craig smells the smoke and watches the cigarette burn up, the ash advancing towards Kenny’s fingers. Craig shifts and holds the dark blue jacket he brought with him with both hands and tries to think of a time that Kenny has been to his house without Karen. He can only think of one, and that was in elementary school with Stan and Kyle, to ask for the hundred-dollar bill Craig got for his birthday.

The longer he stares at Kenny’s face, the more it seems Kenny’s lips are twitching. Craig notices the bluish tint to his parted lips and small clouds of breath, heat and moisture leaving his mouth. He experiences an uncomfortable upwelling of emotion at the realization that Kenny’s lips are forming words, brief whispers up into the air.

“Kenny,” Craig says. He doesn’t say it out loud often, and he feels the cold pierce his sweatshirt a little further.

Kenny turns his head very slowly. His bangs fall over his nose, which crinkles as his lips crack and twitch into a grin. His teeth are slightly yellow on the bottom row, but clean, and Craig thinks they came in mostly straight, for never having braces. Kenny’s cigarette is dead, pressed into the ice on the hood of the car, ice that he is lying on in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans. 

It has to be thirty degrees outside, and it will only get colder when the sun goes down. Craig knows this and steps closer to Kenny, grabbing hold of his arm. Kenny feels like an ice sculpture, and it makes Craig want to rip his hand away and forget he ever touched him, but instead he grips tighter. Craig tries to be gentle but ends up tugging him off the car, and Kenny slides off easily and stands unsteadily and too close, holding onto his arms and breathing wet ice onto his left cheek. He smells like weed and his pupils are too large, and Craig recognizes the look in Kenny’s eyes and suspects pills. Craig quickly wraps the spare jacket around Kenny’s shoulders and realizes Kenny’s hair is wet, maybe from the snow.

“Fucking asshole,” he says, and pulls the blonde in towards the house. 

Kenny lets him.

When the blankets don’t work, Craig runs a hot bath. His mother used to wrap him in blankets and run a bath for him when he was little if he stayed out in the snow too long, and it’s something he never particularly gave a shit about until tonight. He read somewhere that you aren't supposed to do that, but he doesn't really care. An hour cocooned on the bed and little progress, but twenty minutes in the hot water and Kenny finally stops shaking with that dead-inside grin.

The small bathroom is permeated with hot vapor from the bath, the mirror and counter misted over with steam. Craig has his t-shirt hanging from a hook on the door and has stripped down to a pair of baggy grey sweatpants. He sits on the ground with his back to the wall and has his left elbow on the edge of the tub, so he can rest his face in his hand. It’s so fucking hot. Craig doesn’t understand how a room can be so hot when it’s this cold out. He’s sweating even without a shirt, and wishes he could just leave the room without thinking the blonde will drown. 

Lifting his head from his hand, he can see the muscles of Kenny’s back shifting as he sits forward and grips his hair with his hands. Craig sighs and looks away from the pale slick skin sticking up out of the water. 

Kenny is naked and quiet. Craig pushes his dark bangs over his eyes to cover his stare. He wonders if Kenny’s just having a bad trip. He wonders how long he will stay quiet. He feels tired of silence to the point of incomprehension.

“Comfy, McCormick?” he asks.

He doesn’t know why Kenny’s first name slipped out on the driveway, but he hopes the blonde is too high to remember.

The swish of water as the blonde moves in the tub does weird things to his stomach. Craig lifts his head and sees Kenny facing him, looking nearly lucid. His hair is wet and sticking to his face, and his eyes are focused on Craig’s chest. Craig becomes aware of his own breathing, of how his chest moves with each exhale. Kenny looks away and into the water. He sways forward, smirking.

“I’m toast,” Kenny says. “I’m fucking burnt up.”

Craig frowns.

“You’re high,” he says.

Kenny laughs and shakes his head, like it’s an inside joke with someone else. It pisses him off. Then Kenny’s expression changes into something ugly and unrecognizable, and it accentuates everything hard to look at, like the way his hair hangs in drenched strands, or the yellowing bruises on his sides, ribs, arms, or the empty look in his eyes. It’s unsettling.

“I want pants,” Kenny says, and Craig holds up the plaid pajama pants he brought in from his room. Sharing clothes pisses Craig off, but less so with Kenny, because he’s poor, and because he always gives them back. But sometimes Craig thinks he wouldn’t mind if Kenny just kept his shirts, if he never gave anything back at all.

Kenny stands, water falling off him and splashing back into the tub. Craig directs his gaze to the eggshell colored tiles and holds it there. The soft brush of towel against skin becomes agonizing. Kenny takes the pants from his hand, and Craig listens to the fabric sliding up his thighs and shuts his eyes tightly. It’s silent long after the sound stops. When Craig finally looks, Kenny is smiling curiously, hovering in front of him with ghosts in his eyes.

Kenny sleeps it off on Craig’s floor and is gone before he wakes up. The window is unlocked and there is a note on the nightstand written in chaotic scrawl:

'Glad it was your car.'

—Kenny

Craig stares at the note until it’s time to leave for class.

… 

The hallways of South Park High are darker than usual since the blizzard, natural light not quite bright enough as Craig walks out of homeroom and towards his locker. He has a headache and Clyde and Token in tow.

“You skipped class last week.”

Clyde’s one to talk.

“But I’ll ace the test,” Token says.

Token definitely will. Craig considers asking for help studying, does the cost/benefit of effort and success, relaxation and failure. Clyde blows his nose and talks through the tissue.

“If I could skip class and ace the test, I would be so happy.”

Craig stops in front of his locker and twists his pin number into the lock until it clicks. When he swings the locker door open, Token reaches past him and slaps a yellow smiley face sticker onto the blue metal inside.

“There you go,” Token says, and leans on the locker next to him, pointing at the sticker, “that’s the face normal people make when they’re happy.”

Token has the yellow three-pronged comb he bought for his disco costume last year sticking out the side of his afro. Craig recalls he spent all night at the dance saying things like _jive_ and _turkey,_ while Craig sat outside and got high. Token liked the wig so much he decided to grow one. Craig misses being high. Craig likes hanging out with Token, but right now he is missing Tweek; Craig could use a strong cup of coffee and a nice fat blunt.

Clyde puts the tissue in his pocket and rubs his nose without taking his thumbs out of the loops on the ends of his bag straps. Clyde has on a red button up sweater and stands on Craig’s other side with both straps of his backpack on his shoulders. His nose is sunburnt, and Craig can’t figure out how Clyde managed that during a blizzard, spending all week inside. He likes Clyde too, but thinks he’s kind of lame at the same time.

“I’m fine,” Craig says. 

He adjusts his chullo to fit better before grabbing his green and blue Economics text and slamming the locker shut. Token pushes off the lockers _—_ “Sure you are” _—_ and swings into a walk beside him. Clyde shuffles slightly behind.

There’s a slight raise in chatter, and Craig instinctually casts a glance down the hallway behind him, where Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman linger between classes.

He sees Stan first. He’s wringing out his beanie and looks like he got thrown in a melting snow bank or something. He looks mad, sort of tense in the face. Stan makes Craig uncomfortable lately, like he’s always on the edge of a breakdown. Probably because his best friend can only think about getting into an Ivy League college and never gives him the time of day. Kyle is standing next to Stan and texting on his phone. Cartman is wearing an old, tattered shirt that’s too small and says, “I stand with Denmark.” Craig almost misses the splash of orange and blonde leaning up against the lockers next to them. He locks eyes with Kenny McCormick and stops walking, only vaguely notes the complaints of his friends beside him. Kenny curls the side of his mouth into a crooked grin. It occurs to him that Kenny was and is watching him from across the hall, and he loses his breath a little. It pisses him off. Craig flips him the bird and walks away.

He spends his entire next class memorizing the notches on his desk, replaying the grin in his mind.

… 

It’s Friday. Karen McCormick left about thirty minutes ago. Craig is already seated on the blue couch in the living room with the television on mute with subtitles. He listens to Ruby come down the stairs, shuffle over to the couch in her plush slippers, then take a seat at the other end. Craig pretends to watch the screen. He waits. He notices that the wall clock is broken, because he can’t hear it ticking. He watches dust whirl in a sunbeam coming through the window, casting a white glare on the television. The longer Ruby goes without speaking, the more nauseous Craig becomes. Eventually, she begins.

… 

It is still Friday.

Craig has each hand on a side of the toilet bowl. The bulb in the bathroom blew out yesterday during his shower, so he has the door open for light. The light from the hall reminds him of headlights, cutting darker and brighter angles than he thinks a bathroom should have. His knees ache from tile.

Craig has not thrown up, but he should. It should all come up. He thinks it should happen soon, and hovers over the bowl with his mouth open. It smells like bleach, because he cleaned the toilet before assuming this position.

He sticks his finger down his throat, but does not have a gag reflex. 

He thinks Kenny McCormick should take his sister and leave that fucking house. He thinks there is something he hates more than Kenny McCormick’s back.

He leans further over the bowl and waits.

… 

On Sunday, Craig falls asleep on the couch watching CSI shows, and that’s the only reason he wakes up to open the door at one in the morning for Kenny McCormick when he knocks. Kenny smiles.

“What are you doing here?”

A car goes by. With the passing headlights, Kenny’s face appears to retreat further into the hood of his parka, just the edge of his grin visible for a moment before it disappears.

“Can I come in?”

Craig is wearing Red Racer pajamas but there’s nothing he can do about that now. He steps to the side. Kenny hesitates while his breath clouds in front of him. Craig sniffs when his nose starts to feel wet, and Kenny’s grin reappears.

Craig turns the light on in the kitchen and goes to the cabinet on instinct. When he was younger and his mom had no job and lots of time, sometimes she would feed him after he had a panic attack. Standing in front of the open cabinet, looking at a box of Hamburger Helper, Craig briefly considers feeding Kenny, but the blonde muffles a sort of wet cough from his seat at the table and Craig thinks maybe Kenny would just hack it back up, like a sick cat. He decides making tea is safer and pulls out two lemon-ginger tea bags, then sets them on the counter.

He can feel Kenny watching him and it’s uncomfortable in a different way than he’s used to. Craig generally dislikes eyes on him. When he was in fourth grade he spent ten minutes in a broom closet feeling like his chest was exploding and he couldn’t breathe, just from giving a five-minute presentation on the eating habits of leopard seals. Even now he can’t think of being watched without thinking of glaciers, and he can’t think of glaciers without thinking of leopard seals, and he can’t think of seals without thinking of a dark room smelling of bleach and not being able to breathe. But Kenny’s eyes feel sort of warm on his back, sort of tingly and something else.

The sound of the faucet going on and water hitting the bottom of the teapot startles him, even though he’s the one who caused it, and he sees Kenny’s fingers twitch on the table out of the corner of his eye. The bottoms of his feet itch, and it’s that time of night or morning when tile floor is so cold it feels damp.

“You don’t have to do that,” Kenny says. 

Craig puts the teapot on the stove and turns the dial to medium high. Kenny has his parka hanging off his chair, has his elbows propped on the table and that fucking grin on his face. His hair isn’t as light as usual, looks like he hasn’t showered in a couple of days, other than getting caught in the snow. He’s wearing a black tank top and is shivering. It makes the room look colder than it is. Craig is sort of afraid to walk away from the stove for some reason.

“Why aren’t you wearing your jacket?”

“It’s wet.” Kenny’s answer is immediate, and his mouth is so stiff in that grin that his lips barely move to accommodate the sounds. “Why are you standing like that?”

Craig looks down at his feet, the hem of his Red Racer pants slightly too long. He doesn’t know why he’s standing or how Kenny means that. He is reminded that his small social life at school depends solely on the fact the same three or four people have surrounded him all his life and they always tell him what they mean when they speak, so he doesn’t have to overthink anything.

“Do you want me to sit?” he asks, a little delayed.

Kenny’s grin softens into a smile. “No. Can we get some blankets?”

“I’m making tea.”

“Forget the tea, Craig.”

He doesn’t forget the tea, but he turns off the stove and leaves it there.

Kenny is sort of hard to pin down sometimes. A few weeks before the blizzard, Craig couldn’t get Kenny past the driveway and inside the house for anything but his sister. Not that he tried that hard. But every time Craig invites him to stay a little longer, tries to delay that inexplicable moment of panic he experiences every time Kenny walks away from him, he’s been refused. And now this:

“It’ll be warmer this way.” The heat of his whisper hits Craig’s cheek and tightens his throat a little. 

They’re on Craig’s bed, nestled under two massive blankets and curled around each other like crescent moons. Craig didn’t do this, is quickly learning that Kenny can be just as spatially intrusive as he can be evasive and fleeting. He thinks his heart is beating too fast to be normal; he hears his own pulse, feels his mouth drying out. His hands twitch beneath the comforter. He can’t figure out what caused this change, why Kenny is totally lucid and in his bed. He tries very hard not to touch Kenny and isn’t sure why, curls his back in an awkward way just to get some space between them. Kenny had insisted they both be shirtless, and he thinks Kenny would have stripped them both down completely if he hadn’t drawn the line there. He wonders if he should have said no, but the thought of Kenny taking offense and leaving in the middle of the night makes the thought sort of unappealing, especially tonight.

Kenny got to Craig’s house just in time. By now they can hear the wind billowing fiercely past Craig’s window, can see the flurry of white whirl by the streetlamp across the street. Craig shivers, wonders at how some sounds can make someone hot or cold, can cause a bone chill like this. He stiffens when a cold hand slides up his back, and he catches Kenny’s gaze in the dark.

“Come here,” Kenny whispers, but slides closer and closes the gap between their chests mostly by himself.

Craig can barely breathe, thinks his heart is going to beat out of his chest as Kenny’s hands push and pull Craig out of his awkward position and reposition Craig’s head to rest on Kenny’s neck while Kenny gets the pillow. By the time Kenny is done, Craig can feel every inch of Kenny against him, the quickly warming skin of their chests starting to stick together, the hard press of Kenny’s thighs against his own. Kenny exhales a deep sigh of comfort and continues to hold Craig’s neck and back, like he’s waiting for resistance. Craig’s hands keep twitching and his heart rate isn’t slowing down at all, and he knows Kenny can feel every unnerved reaction from his body with them pressed close like this. Still, Craig can’t bring himself to object, just as he can’t bring his hands to Kenny’s body.

“Relax,” Kenny breathes, and starts to do things with his hands, massaging Craig’s neck and back with these gentle squeezes and pressures that make Craig exhale a sharp breath as his stomach muscles tighten.

Craig doesn’t think he can even speak, doesn’t think he could even summon sarcasm right now, not with the way his lips brush Kenny’s neck with every breath, the way Kenny is holding Craig’s head there like he wants him to do something. Kenny’s lips brush his earlobe, and Craig’s hands unconsciously find their way to Kenny’s back as his stomach muscles give another twitch. He forces out words.

“What?” It comes out choked and unfinished, not nearly the several questions he wanted to ask but close enough to somehow be humiliating. Kenny squeezes him tighter.

“Can I stay here, tonight?”

“McCormick—”

“Kenny,” he breathes, and Craig shivers, “you called me Kenny before.” It’s somehow a demand. He gently slides his thigh between Craig’s legs, and Craig’s entire body clenches when that thigh pushes up into his groin; he digs his fingers into Kenny’s back with a quiet choke. 

“Kenny.”

Kenny sucks Craig’s earlobe into his mouth, elicits another full body shiver from him, and presses himself harder against him. Craig’s pulse is getting dangerous; he can barely hear the storm anymore over his own blood rushing, and he knows he’s grown embarrassingly hard and Kenny must feel it, because he’s sliding his thigh against him purposefully and curling his arms around his low back and Craig lets out a soft sound, like a whimper, and it’s completely pathetic, but it does something for Kenny. The blonde groans and rolls Craig onto his back, spreads Craig’s legs with his hands and settles between them. He slides his hands up his naked sides and under his back and Craig has his eyes closed tightly, is nearly hyperventilating and doesn’t know how to handle this situation, has never had someone try to touch him like this, doesn’t want Kenny to leave and maybe even doesn’t want him to stop whatever this is he’s doing, because it’s sort of nice. And it’s because his eyes are closed that Kenny’s lips surprise him, make him part his lips just to try to breath better, but Kenny slots their mouths together tighter and suckles his bottom lip and Craig grips the blonde’s sides and has to remember how to breathe through his nose.

Kenny has kissed him once before, at a party, junior year. They’d been locked in a closet together for seven minutes. Craig had sort of thought the whole game was bogus.

“But I like it,” Kenny said, his hands on Craig’s arms, sliding up to his neck slowly. “It’s the only party game that no one’s watching.”

It had been the right thing to say. Craig let Kenny pull him closer by tangling a hand in Craig’s hair.

“Have you ever been kissed?” Kenny asked. 

Craig shook his head.

“Do you not want to be kissed?”

Craig had to think about that and frowned, started to pull away as he realized the answer, started to feel self-conscious about his lack of social appeal, the inevitableness of his aloneness, and thought maybe he should stop drinking for the night. “Nobody’s ever tried.”

Kenny half exhaled, half laughed—some sort of sound of relief or amusement. “That’s insane,” he whispered, “that’s so insane.”

Craig hadn’t been surprised when Kenny kissed him, had sort of expected that when they’d had their names drawn and been shoved into a glorified cubby. But he was surprised when Kenny continued to kiss him for seven minutes, nibbled on his lips, moaned praises into his mouth, straddled his hips, played with his hair, smiled against his lips and whispered, “Don’t forget, I got your first. It’s mine forever.” Like that was an amazing thing, like it was the best thing. Craig pretended it never happened afterward, and so did Kenny. Craig never really got over that, though—that something of his belongs to Kenny.

But right now, Kenny is kissing him differently; there is heat behind this kiss, a startling sense of direction, no time limit or intention of stopping. Kenny’s lips assault and massage Craig’s mouth, seek out his tongue and coax it into Kenny’s mouth so he can suck and _oh_ —Craig moans and gives himself over, lets Kenny have control of his body as he creates a sort of messy rhythm between their hips and tongues. He lets Kenny discard their pants and un-tuck them both from their underwear, then discard those too; lets Kenny handle his cock with his callused hands and unravels beneath him, moans into his mouth and touches any part of Kenny he can as the blonde makes all sorts of filthy sounds and pumps their lengths together with spit and pre-cum.

“Craig,” he gasps.

“Yes, yes.” He doesn’t even know what the question is. Kenny laughs tightly, almost pained.

“Craig do you want me to—will you let me touch you anywhere? Would you let me do anything?”

Craig’s head is thrown back on the pillow, dangerously close to the headboard, as Kenny thumbs the head of his cock and Craig can barely breathe but he manages to think the question over. It’s not a fair question. He doesn’t know what Kenny wants to do to him; he could end up losing his virginity in more ways than one right now if Kenny wants it, could have any number of things happen. He briefly considers that Kenny may want to hurt him. The question is so unfair. But Craig doesn’t really say no to Kenny much these days.

“You can do anything,” he whispers, and Kenny just moans and lays flush against him, rocks their hips together, and kisses from his lips to his neck.

“Can I mark you? Will anything happen to you?” Sometimes Kenny asks questions like this, questions that make Craig kind of scared, make him think Kenny isn’t really okay, make him want to keep Kenny from going home.

“Nothing will happen to me,” he says. 

Kenny is immediately at his neck, doing all sorts of incredible things with his mouth while he strokes Craig back to full hardness after his temporary distraction. Some of it hurts a little, punishing little bites and harsh sucks that end in teeth and send multiple chills down his spine. Craig almost doesn’t startle from the finger Kenny slips inside him, Kenny’s other hand still slowly pumping his length. He gasps against Kenny’s neck and clenches around the intrusion, and Kenny strokes him faster while doing something inside him that makes Craig’s muscles spasm and the tension inside him builds unbearably until it breaks completely. His eyes open involuntarily and he’s met with the ceiling as he comes in Kenny’s hands, whimpering as the blonde milks him through his orgasm. He finally looks at the blonde, and is suddenly furious with himself for being too cowardly to look at him this whole time, because Kenny is flushed and sweaty and jerking himself off against Craig’s oversensitive cock using Craig’s cum for lubricant, and Kenny’s face when he finally orgasms—teeth gritted and eyes intense on Craig’s fluid-splattered neck—is the best thing he’s ever fucking seen.

Part of Craig thinks maybe Kenny will want some space after coming all over his chest, is thinking maybe _he_ should want some space from _Kenny_ after a bit of his cum hits his chin: a drop right on the edge of his mouth that he quickly and unthinkingly swipes away with his tongue; Craig nearly regrets it the second the taste hits him, except Kenny looks at him like he just hung the moon, grips him by the sides of his face and kisses him until he can’t think straight. Their chests unstick tellingly when they pull apart, and the blankets slide off of their hips as Kenny leads Craig out of bed by his wrist toward his bathroom.

Craig is struck by the ease with which Kenny navigates his room in the dark; his fingers find the light switch and flick on the weakest bathroom light like it’s habitual. He pulls the shower curtain open slowly and quietly, shooting Craig a nervous look over his shoulder like, ‘we’re so fucking loud.’ But Kenny is just paranoid, and Craig is more concerned with how his heart rate still hasn’t quite slowed to its proper pace.

“My parents aren’t home,” Craig reminds him, voice only slightly out of breath and below normal indoor volume. “It's just Ruby down the hall.”

Kenny shrugs his shoulders, fiddling with his shower faucet. He figures it out fairly quickly and the shower sputters on; the hollow sounds of water hitting the tub and curtain fill the small bathroom. Kenny turns around, and Craig only realizes they haven’t been looking each other in the eyes when he’s suddenly met with Kenny’s ghost blue gaze and feels slightly unprepared. Kenny isn’t grinning. He isn’t really doing anything except standing there by the shower, staring at Craig with this contemplative look on his face that does weird things to his nerves. 

Either the water is warm now or Kenny doesn’t care, because he turns and steps into the shower. Craig looks down at the mess on his own chest and feels the skin on his neck pull in some places, reminding him that every second he stands here feeling weird, cum is drying on his neck, which makes him kind of want to retch. He quickly follows the blonde, and his chest tightens as Kenny grabs hold of his arm to steady him while he steps over the tub into the shower and tugs the sailboat print curtain closed behind him. The water is warm.

He’s not sure what he expected, but he is slightly perturbed by the way Kenny takes responsibility for the mess, pulls Craig under the water and militarily scrubs their seed from Craig's skin. Craig bites his tongue but doesn’t like it; Kenny’s expression is a different sort of detached, not cold but sort of intense—there is desperation behind the calm that’s uncomfortable to witness. Craig winces as Kenny’s nails scratch the skin of his stomach and Kenny winces too, seems to come back to himself a little, offers a quiet, “Sorry” without looking up before reaching past him to uncap the soap.

Craig’s heart and lungs still can’t seem to adjust correctly, which is concerning, and despite their previous activity he still squirms beneath Kenny’s soap covered hands. Kenny notices, takes a deep breath, and the corner of his mouth curves upward as he lets out an airy little laugh while spreading suds up Craig’s back with both hands. Craig’s chest quivers and he can’t tell if he wants to push Kenny away or fall into him completely, struggling to relax under the warm spray with Kenny’s lips still so close to his. His arms hang stiffly at his sides as he shivers under Kenny’s careful exploration of his back, fixating his eyes on the blonde’s mouth. Kenny wets his lips and swallows, speaks so softly that Craig barely distinguishes his words from the water.

“You act like I’m the only person who’s ever touched you,” he whispers, and reaches up to caress Craig’s cheek.

Craig flinches against the warm touch, blinks away water with his eyelashes as Kenny’s thumb presses down on his bottom lip. Kenny’s mouth curves into a half smile, and Craig lets his thumb past his lips, reminds himself to breathe while Kenny traces the wet rim of his mouth slowly and intimately. 

Craig tries to think of a time when someone who isn’t Kenny McCormick touched him. Yesterday, in his Econ class, Clyde punched his thigh because he was stepping on one of his backpack straps. It had hurt. He can also conjure a brief hug from his parents the week after his birthday, six months ago, and a few pats on the back from Token when his guinea pig died last year. His throat starts to feel sort of tight, and he wonders if that makes him sad, if it’s okay to be sad in front of someone like Kenny. He thinks his thoughts must show on his face, because Kenny stops smiling and holds Craig’s face with both hands. His lips brush Craig’s while he speaks, and he wonders if that counts as a kiss.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, briefly catches Craig’s bottom lip with his teeth and releases it, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Craig’s not sure what he means, but hearing the word ‘sorry’ from Kenny McCormick is somehow the worst. He only hesitates for a few seconds before carefully placing his hands on each side of Kenny’s waist. His voice sounds weird in his own ears.

“Keep touching me.”

Kenny exhales sharply, nods, and kisses him properly. Craig’s eyes flutter shut while the blonde slides his hands down his body to his hips, then gently presses his back into the slightly chilled, slick tiles of the shower wall. Kenny’s hot skin is damp against his chest as water pours down the back of Kenny’s head and runs over Craig’s hands on his back, the heat of Kenny’s tongue in his mouth mirrored in their quickly recovering members trapped between their bodies. He hears the soap being uncapped, and then all at once Kenny is turning him around, and Craig’s hands are on the wall, and Kenny is nudging his legs apart and sliding two slicked fingers into his entrance. Craig lets his mouth fall open and presses his forehead to the tiles, and it feels good, but he can’t tell if Kenny is massaging or cleaning or both. He guesses it doesn’t really matter, because Kenny rubs into that place inside him he’d been toying with before and Craig can’t help but let all the air out of his lungs at once. 

He’s fully hard now, and he’s not sure how much time passes with Kenny performing odd ministrations inside him until his legs are shaking and Kenny turns him back around and kisses him, fingers still insistent inside him as he’s once again trapped between Kenny’s chest and the wall.

“Let me fuck you,” Kenny breathes, and Craig grips Kenny’s hips harder, tries to stay standing. “You’ll like it.”

Craig doesn’t realize he’s nodding and whispering, “Okay,” until the fingers are abruptly withdrawn and Kenny pulls away from him, shuts the water off and tugs the curtain open. They’re soaking wet, but, while hastily guiding Craig out of the shower and pulling Craig’s towel off the hook on the bathroom door, Kenny doesn’t seem to mind the water dripping off their bodies and hair, or his blonde bangs sticking to his face. Craig almost objects, but Kenny just drags him out into the bedroom and throws the towel on the bed before pulling Craig down on top of it with him.

“Firsts should happen in a bed,” he says, tone sort of firm and instructive and not quite matching the situation, but Craig can’t focus on it long, can’t get past how soaked they are, how slick everything feels between them.

He kisses him three times, little nips of lips and teeth that flutter Craig’s stomach, before trailing his lips down his jaw and sliding on top of him. Craig goes a little light headed at the feeling of having his thighs pushed up and his ass exposed, feels instantly stiff and uneasy with Kenny’s grip firm behind his knees, but Kenny doesn’t seem to notice, just moans into his neck right under his ear and wraps Craig’s legs around his waist before reaching down and positioning himself. Craig’s heart leaps when he feels Kenny’s head press against his entrance, and he wraps his arms around the blonde’s back tightly, caging heat between their shivering bodies as the water begins to cool their skin. Craig experiences a surge of panic and digs his hands into Kenny’s shoulder blades, feels anxiety chill his blood and a telling ache form in his chest as Kenny pushes the head of his cock past his entrance, and he doesn’t really know how to notify the blonde that something is wrong without giving himself away but the idea of having Kenny balls deep inside his ass while he can already barely breathe and his chest is burning is horrifying and he flinches away from the intrusion violently.

“Stop,” he gasps, and Kenny freezes. Craig can’t calm his respiratory rhythm enough to not sound freaked. “Stop.”

Kenny immediately retreats, pulls unexpectedly far away from him until he’s kneeling between Craig’s legs with a sort of startled, nauseous expression that makes Craig kind of hate himself despite the rapid tightening of his chest. Craig turns on his side, clutches at his chest, and briefly believes his heart is going to burst inside him, that he’s dying. He forces his eyes open and stares at the small amount of light coming through the shut blinds of his window, listens to the slow whirl of the ceiling fan. He tries to remember every piece of advice given to him by his therapist, despite the room starting to rotate and tilt unnaturally and not being able to take in a full breath of air before his lungs force it all back out. She said he could stop it early if he could just relax, but Craig can’t remember how to do that right now, hasn’t had this happen in at least two months.

“Craig?”

Warm hands pull him onto his back, and with some effort, rotate him onto his other side. He struggles through his pitiful short breaths and stares wide-eyed at Kenny, who has suddenly become calm, is lying down facing him and has a sort of controlled look on his face that Craig finds semi-comforting. Kenny rubs circles into Craig’s back and tugs the dark blue comforter over them both, covering both of their heads, cocooning them in the dark with their body heat so Craig can't see the world spin. He feels Kenny rest his forehead against his as he continues to run his hand over Craig’s back and arm in various soothing patterns.

“It’s okay,” he says, and Craig reluctantly believes him, because of the way he says it: matter-of-fact. “It’s alright.”

Craig feels his entire body relax a little under the attention, takes deeper and deeper breaths as the minutes pass. They stay like this for a long time.

“You get panic attacks,” Kenny says eventually. Only Craig’s family and teachers know this about him; Clyde and Token think it stopped after grade school.

“Don’t tell anyone.” He tries to sound irritated. It doesn’t work; he sounds shaken up.

“Okay,” Kenny says, and pushes Craig onto his back without disturbing the covers. “Lie back.”

Craig makes a confused noise in response to Kenny sliding down his body that quickly becomes something else when he feels a gentle bite on his hip that evolves into suckling.

“Kenny,” he gasps. 

Kenny makes a satisfied noise in the back of his throat as his hands start kneading Craig’s thighs. Craig almost wishes he could see, but the weight of the blanket over his face is oddly grounding, like what’s happening underneath is as safe and protected as it is warm, and now that he thinks about it, it seems kind of stupid, but he still grips the sheets by his hips tightly and moans when his cock is enclosed in Kenny’s unimaginably hot, wet, velvety mouth. He gasps as Kenny starts to suck and bob, feels each hot press of his tongue along his head like a direct hit to his core, feels the suction every time his mouth is nearly off him like he’s tugging on his spine, can’t help but dig his hands into the bed and lift his hips to chase his mouth. Kenny doesn’t stop his hips from twitching, nor his attempts to thrust up into that amazing heat, just takes him further in until his nose is buried in his groin and Craig thinks he’s going to pass out. Craig doesn’t even startle when Kenny releases his length with a few solid licks up his shaft, just whines dejectedly and becomes aware of having sucked the blanket into his mouth to bite and muffle his sounds, leaving a saliva-soaked spot in the fabric when he spits it out and tries to talk.

“Do you want me to—”

“No,” Kenny nearly moans, climbs back up his body and kisses Craig’s neck, plays with his own cock. “I want to try again, we’ll do it differently, come on,” he punctuates with a light nibble and pats Craig’s hip.

He doesn’t get much of a chance to process his reply before Kenny is insistent, nudging Craig to roll onto his stomach—an instruction Craig blindly follows. This already feels better, chest pressed to the damp cotton towel and Kenny’s body behind him, chest to back, arm wrapping around his abdomen and urging his hips up off the mattress and his knees apart. The blanket is still covering them, trapping heat and blocking light, and Craig can feel the fabric on his hands just as he can feel Kenny’s lips at his ear, can feel Kenny’s hand on his hip and his cock at his entrance.

“Good?” Kenny asks, sliding the hand on his hip to his pelvis just as he pushes inside just barely, and Craig moans against the mattress.

“Yeah.”

Kenny groans softly into his neck and slowly pushes in, thrusting in and out in small increments until he’s completely sheathed. Craig’s blood is pulsing in his ears in time with his urge to clench around the hard throbbing heat buried inside him, but he tries not to, because it hurts and feels good and it’s nothing like anything he’s ever experienced before. Kenny grips Craig’s length in tight strokes without thrusting, just stays pressed deep inside him while Craig spasms around his length with every tug until all Craig can think about is how equally eager and hesitant he is for Kenny to move and decides to just get it over with, starts rocking back onto him. Kenny moans into his hair and gives him one last pump before releasing his length and pushing down on his upper back. Craig collapses, lets himself be shoved into the mattress until the only part of him lifted is where Kenny has just barely pulled his hips up, more just angled them by forcing his low back to arch and keeping him there with a bruising grip on his hip. He sets an easy pace, slow enough to fuck into him well and thoroughly, fast enough that his body is rocked forward with every thrust. The wet towel underneath him chafes the skin on his chest, and every time Kenny pushes into him, chest flush to Craig’s back, the head of his dick brushes fabric, and he can’t help but gasp and twitch.

“Can I go harder?” Kenny asks, between suckling and biting his neck.

Craig groans at the thought, because it already hurts a little, bunches the sheets closest to his head in his hands. 

“Anything,” he says.

Kenny likes his answer, growls into his skin and bites harder, wraps an arm across Craig’s chest and grabs his shoulder to keep him from moving, and Craig’s mouth falls open in some kind of pleasured agony as Kenny proves relentless, pounds into him hard and fast, skin slapping loudly in the dark. The hard thrusts start to numb him, allow pleasure to coil tightly inside him, and he lets out a desperate, breathy keen that sounds pornographic even to his own ears. Kenny continues to tear into him at a brutal pace until he can’t even make sounds, can only part his lips in a constant silent cry and tremble and drool on the sheets. He’s almost there when Kenny frees his neck from his teeth and asks, in the huskiest close-to-coming voice he’s ever heard, if he can come inside him, and Craig can’t speak but nods furiously. It isn’t long before he feels Kenny’s hot release inside him, moans through Kenny’s finishing thrusts. He’s barely lucid when Kenny pulls out of him and knocks the covers off of them. The fresh air hits his lungs like a shock of water and he squirms in Kenny’s arms uncontrollably as the blonde lies back and takes Craig with him, holds him back-to-chest so Craig is lying on top of him as Kenny grips his throbbing cock and jerks him off roughly. Craig arches and moans, head falling back over Kenny’s shoulder, and can’t think past how stretched and sore his ass is and how badly he wants to come.

Kenny is mumbling in his ear, some throaty variation of “Come on Craig, come on, I’ve got you,” and Craig is coated in sweat and can feel the edge, is almost there, and Kenny is pumping him furiously, hasn’t faltered even once, but he just _can’t_. He tries to tell Kenny so, and chokes out the word ‘can’t’ between gasps. Kenny switches his pace into short, hard jerks, and within twenty seconds Craig is arching and spilling into Kenny’s hand with a harsh cry, practically sobbing in relief as he comes apart and falls limp against the hard chest beneath him as Kenny massages him through his orgasm, pumping him until he’s completely dry and sore and quickly softening, then strokes him a few extra times for no reason, before he reaches down and grabs Craig’s balls and rolls them. Craig’s eyes fly open as his entire body jerks from the over sensitized feeling, a strangled whine tearing out of his throat as Kenny manipulates him, chuckling in his ear as he squirms and keens and he wants it to stop but doesn’t dare fight it, lets Kenny torture these sounds from him until he gets bored and slides out from under him, lays next to him and wraps him up in his arms, tangles his hand in Craig’s hair and lets both of their bodies rest, doesn’t drag them off to the shower again, either.

“Fuck.” Kenny mumbles into his shoulder, has an arm and a leg flopped over him, keeping Craig in place.

Craig nods, sighs; he can’t imagine moving any sooner than seven hours from now.

Neither of them musters the will to move. Craig briefly considers trying to sit up, get clean or put clothes on, but his eyes are too heavy and he can’t lift Kenny anyway, and he’s almost asleep before he can finish the thought.

“Craig.”

“Hm.”

“Don’t fall asleep.”

Craig refuses to open his eyes; his heart is finally slowing down, his whole body melting into the bed. He hasn’t been this relaxed in months, maybe years. He feels Kenny slide off him and shivers in the absence of body heat. Craig makes a vaguely irked sound as Kenny bends Craig’s legs and pushes his thighs up, but when he tries to wriggle away Kenny just laughs and grips him tighter.

“Let me see,” Kenny says, and Craig reluctantly opens his eyes as Kenny pulls his ass cheeks apart. Something warm and wet leaks out of him, and Kenny’s expression is split between pain, lust, and admiration. “Jesus.”

It occurs to him that something might be wrong, but he’s too tired to care. “Blood?” he asks, feeling sort of outside his own body.

Kenny licks his cracked lips and pushes Craig’s thighs up more, is still staring. “Mostly cum,” he says, and sounds a little choked, looks sort of starved. Craig tries to lower his legs but Kenny makes a depraved sound in his throat and holds him there. “Let me watch,” he breathes. Craig feels kind of gross but gives up, closes his eyes and tries not to think about the cum slowly eking out of his ass, lets Kenny do what he wants.

“I’m cold,” he says. The bed is wet and the ceiling fan is still on.

Kenny sighs and lowers Craig’s legs, and the shift in weight as he gets off the bed jostles Craig a little. Craig is briefly worried that Kenny is going to make him stand up.

“I don’t want to move,” he says honestly. Kenny’s laugh comes out muffled from the bathroom, is quickly followed by something like the faucet being turned on and off.

“Then stay down,” Kenny says, closer now.

Craig’s mind feels foggy, reality sort of distant and fading. He feels heavy, and breathes deeply. He vaguely feels something wet and rough pass over his thighs in gentle strokes. Kenny’s voice sounds far away, indulgent, warm.

“You’re so soft,” he says.

Craig thinks he mumbles a reply, but maybe he doesn’t. His bed is soft. 

Listening to the whirring of the ceiling fan, Craig has a thought. He might not have to watch Kenny walk away possibly ever again.

But that thought is stupid, he decides, and it sort of pisses him off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. I'll let myself out.
> 
> Stay safe, stay healthy. Crazy kids.
> 
> (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


	2. Chapter 2

Biting into a piece of rye toast, Craig brushes crumbs off his U.S. Government lecture notes and tries to focus on the highlighted words instead of on Ruby’s intense stare from across the kitchen table. _Nullification_. Kenny walks over and takes a bite out of Craig’s toast while it’s still in his hand, looks over his shoulder at his notes for a second before he loses interest, pulls out the chair next to him, and sits a little too close for comfort.

“She shouldn’t have to guess what he’s thinking,” Kenny says, carefully sliding Craig’s coffee cup away from his notebook. 

Craig feels Ruby’s eyes leave him and sighs in relief, moves on to the next highlighted term: _Full Faith & Credit Clause_.

“That’s what I said,” she says, “and she actually defended him.” 

Kenny makes a displeased noise and sips his coffee. He’s using Craig’s favorite Red Racer cup, but Craig thinks it would be inappropriate to point that out. The page corner Craig is pinching between his thumb and index finger creases.

Ruby is bitching to Kenny about some kids at her school. Craig has been on his heels since Kenny urged him awake at 6:00am—fully dressed and showered—with an impatient “Wake up, Ruby made coffee.” He then proceeded to use Craig’s mouthwash without asking. _Privileges & Immunities Clause. _

His curiosity gets the better of him; he looks up from his notes and observes his younger sister as subtly as he can. She has her strawberry-blonde hair pulled into messy low pigtails and is smiling slightly. It’s not quite her natural color near the ends of her hair, a little too orange; a while back she dyed her hair black like Craig’s, literally showed her stylist a picture of him and tried to match it. Karen managed to talk her into dying it back to her natural hair several months later, or as close as she could get it. Craig still feels kind of defensive about it, like maybe she’d needed to dye her hair to feel more like his sister and less like their parents’ daughter, like he has failed at being a brother, somehow.

“What are you doing today?” he asks her.

She turns her attention away from Kenny and her eyes turn to him knowingly. “Why, trying to get me out of the house?” 

Craig doesn’t know why his face feels so warm, because she’s just a sophomore who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Hopefully. Kenny looks a little amused beside him, is pointedly not looking at Craig, and it occurs to him maybe Ruby heard something last night, maybe Kenny and Ruby talked about it this morning, without him. He quickly decides to ignore that thought. Or at least try.

“Are you going out tonight?” He asks, takes a bite out of his toast—carefully avoiding Kenny’s teeth marks—and ignores Kenny’s presence entirely.

“Why?” She looks smug. Craig doesn’t understand why every conversation with a sixteen-year-old has to be like this.

“I’ll make you dinner, if you’re not going out.” He sips his coffee from his least favorite Red Racer mug with a little bitterness.

Craig doesn’t get why she suddenly looks so embarrassed, her cheeks flushing and lips pursing. “Oh,” she says, and fiddles with the handle of her flower-patterned mug.

Kenny coughs and Craig glances to the side questioningly. The blonde is leaning back in his chair, arm muscles exposed by his blank tank top as he folds his arms behind his head. His winks at Craig in what he assumes is meant to be a reassuring gesture, but in reality is unnerving, and grins suspiciously.

“When do your parents get back?”

Craig’s heart gives an extra thud and he quickly looks down at his notes. _Linkage. Realignment._

“In a month,” Ruby answers for him, "so they say."

“Are you going home soon?” The question escapes Craig’s mouth unnaturally, sounds sort of strained.

Craig doesn’t dare look up from his notes, reads _The Decline of Party Identification_ three times _._ His muscles clench as Kenny finds his thigh under the table and squeezes.

“I’ve got to check on Karen,” Kenny says casually.

“Why don’t you give her a call and invite her over,” Ruby says, equally casual.

Craig and Kenny glance at each other sideways before looking at Ruby. She’s flipping through a magazine, feigning distraction.

“It’d be kind of fun to have her here for the week, at least,” she continues, and shrugs, like it doesn’t really matter.

Craig exhales harshly, takes a large drink of coffee that burns his tongue, and drinks more. Kenny squeezes his thigh again and he nearly chokes, puts his mug down on the table too quickly; a droplet hits his notebook. Kenny moves Craig’s mug further away from his notebook again.

“Karen would like that,” Kenny says quietly.

Ruby smiles secretively and turns the page of her magazine. Craig shoves an entire piece of toast in his mouth and chokes out a food-muffled reply. “Great.”

… 

Mr. Bronzan stands at the front of the room in khaki shorts and a muscle t-shirt with his arms crossed, wearing a wristwatch nearly half the size of his hand.

“You think you know, but guess what: you don’t. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s right. You don’t know what you don’t know,” he says, and his genuine expression just makes it that much more painful to listen to.

Craig wishes he could look away from the orange-skinned man, but Stan Marsh has been staring at him with a fierce expression for the entire class period, and looking away from Mr. Bronzan’s rant might leave an unwanted opening for his eyes to wander across the room and meet Stan’s, which Craig very much wants to avoid.

Craig’s backpack is already half packed up when the bell rings, but Stan makes his way through the flurry of students fleeing the classroom with surprising dexterity and is standing stiffly in front of Craig’s desk before he can fit his notebook through the zipper. Stan puts his hands on the sides of the desk and leans forward, blue and red hat frayed and crooked on his head, eyes hard and intense. Craig drops his notebook and stares back.

“Bebe says she saw you invite Kenny into your house last night,” he says, expectantly. Craig fails to guess what Stan is expecting, even as his stomach twists.

“Okay,” he says.

Stan glares and leans in further, forcing Craig to press his back to the hard chair and turn his head to the side or risk their noses touching. The classroom is alive with students leaving and entering. Craig is going to be late for his next class. Stan’s breath smells like weed. Craig is surprised Stand can smoke as much as he does and still get upset about things that don't involve him.

“Why was Kenny at your house at one in the morning, Craig?”

“I don’t know.”

Stan snorts bitterly. “You don’t know.”

“He wanted to come inside,” Craig says.

“He stayed there,” says Stan.

The response stuns Craig into silence. He hadn’t imagined that anyone would notice or care about that—even a nosey neighbor like Bebe. Stan huffs, mouth unnervingly close to Craig’s cheek. Craig swallows, focuses on his breathing, and stays very still as he stares down at the floor.

“Kenny already has friends. He doesn’t need you.”

Craig almost wants to laugh at that, wants to turn his eyes up and say, _Is that all?_ Because Craig has always known that about Kenny, even if acknowledging it leaves something thick and bitter in his throat. 

“He doesn’t need you either,” Craig says, because it’s true; Craig has always known that, which is why he’s always scared—scared that Kenny will ‘not need’ any of them all the way into an early grave.

“Stan, let’s go.”

Craig looks up. Kyle is standing by the classroom door, clicking away disinterestedly at his phone. Stan hesitates for a moment, and then slowly withdraws. Lowering his eyes to the linoleum, Craig watches him retreat in his peripherals as he stalks out of the classroom like the shadow of a mountain, shrinking with the rising sun.

… 

Objectively, Craig is aware that it’s too cold for this. He’s lying on the hood of his mustang at the top of a parking garage, staring straight up at the white sky. There is only a thin t-shirt between his back and the sheet of ice on his car. He mimes smoking a cigarette, pressing his fingers to his lips, sucking in, and dropping his hand to the side as he exhales. He can’t quite find the appeal of this. Then again, maybe he would if he had a real cigarette, or if he were high.

He missed lunch period and he’s hungry, but the hollow ache in his gut can’t persuade him to move. Today is Monday. He was supposed to take a health evaluation test during free period. Craig forgot his doctor’s note at home. He can see it in his mind’s eye, a piece of white paper, worn and curling from constant use, resting face-up on the kitchen table. He always seems to forget something important when he leaves the house with no one around to remind him. Even though today he left for school with Kenny, Karen, and Ruby all packed into his car. Even though he drove them all to South Park High, dropping the girls off at the front with all the other freshmen, with Kenny fiddling with all his heat settings in the passenger seat the entire time. Even though, after parking his mustang as far away from campus as possible, he got out of the car and was subsequently pinned to the driver’s side door and then kissed and kissed, making him over thirty minutes late for class. Kenny’s lips were dry and minty, his hands rough and cold against Craig’s cheek and neck.

Craig suddenly feels exhausted. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just go home. Take a hot shower. Watch TV. Maybe take those anxiety pills he never does but probably should. Or at least try the antidepressants his psychiatrist prescribed him instead of dumping them down the toilet. Or not. Probably not. Maybe he’ll just stay here. Parking lots can have the same feeling as forests and cemeteries sometimes: isolated and motionless and anonymous. It’s nice, Craig tells himself, to be alone by choice.

He wonders if Kenny has noticed that he’s gone.

Maybe.

Probably not.

It’s too cold for this. Craig doesn’t know how Kenny does it. It’s miserable. Craig is miserable. He is just now realizing. The wind is quiet today, a rolling breeze, but it’s freezing cold, a slow, biting kind of cold. He should never have taken off his jacket. Craig’s phone buzzes in his jean pocket three times. He watches his breath manifest in the air above him like a ghost as he pulls the phone out of his pants and flips it open, then holds it an inch away from his ear with the volume all the way up.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

Craig ignores the slight jump of his heart rate and swallows before answering.

“How’d you get my number?”

Kenny laughs—a breathy, intoxicating sound. 

“I’ve always had your number. You don’t have my number?”

The fingers of the hand holding his phone are going numb. Craig licks his lips.

“How?”

“Ruby gave it to Karen, in case…” He pauses for a brief inhalation. “In case she ever needed to get ahold of someone.”

Craig’s throat is thick with saliva, and he chokes on it when he inhales to speak. Coughing, he sits up, spine groaning in complaint. He looks around. His is the only car up here. There were at least two others when he first laid down. He didn’t notice them leave.

“When did you get it?” he asks.

“Craig,” Kenny laughs again, but there is an underlying strain that wasn’t there before, “where are you?”

He looks down at his watch and guesses it makes sense Kenny would notice his absence around now, since school just ended. Kenny was probably planning on catching a ride with Craig to take Karen and Ruby home, since they’re all supposedly staying at Craig’s in his parents’ absence. Craig hadn’t actually expected Kenny to keep his word.

“Does Karen have Stan’s number?” he asks.

He can hear Kenny’s quiet breaths under the wind brushing against the phone. It sounds like Kenny is walking.

“No. Why?”

Craig is inexplicably half hard. “You don’t call me.”

“You’re usually _here_ ,” Kenny says, and Craig can’t tell if he imagines the impatience in his tone or not, “where are you?”

Craig sighs and slides off the hood of his mustang, lips partially frozen. He unconsciously holds the phone closer to his ear as he opens the driver’s side door and slides into the seat. He wonders if Kenny recognizes the sound as he tugs the car door shut. “Are you still on campus?”

“Yeah.”

Craig nods, then stops when he becomes conscious of it. “Can you walk Karen and Ruby home?”

The line goes suddenly quiet, wind no longer hitting the speaker. “Craig where are you?”

Craig feels sort of uncomfortable admitting where he is. “Denver.”

Kenny doesn’t respond right away, and Craig fiddles with his keys, toying with the idea of hanging up and putting them in the ignition.

When Kenny finally speaks, it’s with bated breath. “Is this because of…?”

It takes a moment for Craig to realize Kenny means the sex. “No,” he says, “no, I just. School pisses me off.”

He can almost see the smirk developing on the blonde’s face. “School pisses you off.”

Craig loves and hates how Kenny feeds his own words back to him in that soft, sly tone, half mocking, half fond. Craig is more than half hard. He swallows and leans back in his chair, pressing his head into the headrest and covering his eyes with the hand not holding the phone.

“Fuck off,” he sighs, and after a thought, “I gave Ruby money. Make sure they eat.”

Kenny hums into the phone, which Craig takes as an affirmative. Craig opens his mouth to say goodbye and feels unbearably awkward, unsure of how to hang up. He considers just ending the call, is about to go through with it when Kenny seems to lose patience and sigh.

“See you at home,” he says.

Craig briefly forgets how his lungs work, but quickly works it out.

“See you,” Craig says, and hopes he was audible.

The click of Kenny closing his flip phone and ending the call lingers in the dead space of his car. Craig chews the inside of his mouth and drops his phone on the seat next to him. He hears the click of Kenny hanging up for several minutes after the fact, lying blind and motionless in his seat. Taking a deep breath, he brings two fingers to his lips and takes an imaginary pull, then drops the pretend cigarette by the gas pedal. Uncovering his eyes, he slides the key into the ignition and turns.

… 

It’s getting dark earlier and earlier. By the time Craig gets home, it’s barely past six o’clock and it’s pitch black outside. It pisses him off. In concept, Craig appreciates daylight savings time, ever since Ruby turned thirteen and started getting whistled at while walking to school—the beginning of Craig insisting on driving her every morning, so he could watch her safely enter the building with his own eyes. But on days like this, when Craig gets home later than usual after driving to Denver and back on a whim, he sort of wishes that he could see the ground clearly instead of having to feel out patches of ice with his shoes as he goes. He struggles to lock his car door while juggling his keys, his blue jacket and a paper grocery bag full of ingredients for Ruby’s favorite pasta dish. Finally getting the key in the lock, he jiggles it until the mechanism loosens and turns. Unwilling to risk dropping the bag of groceries by trying to get his keys back in his pants pocket, he hooks the key ring on his middle finger and adjusts his jacket to lay over his right shoulder as he tucks the paper bag in his left arm, supporting it from the bottom like a small child. He sighs and collects himself, looking up at his house. It’s unsettling, seeing it from the outside. The warm glow of incandescent lights in the windows cuts through the night, casting shadows at odd angles across the garage door and driveway. It feels lonely, like for a second Craig doesn’t have a home to go back to, is just watching someone else’s house from the outside. By now the air has thickened into a fine mist, the temperature having dropped several degrees after sunset. Craig’s entire face stings with cold.

In the thirty seconds it takes him to make his way up the driveway and stand in the shaded space by the front door, his teeth begin to rattle. The porch light is out, and Craig reminds himself for the millionth time to replace the bulb. Careful not to drop the keys hanging off his finger, Craig knocks on his own front door rather than play ‘find the house key’ while freezing half to death. Three heartbeats later, the lock clicks and the door swings open.

Kenny’s hair hangs light and dry, swooping into his ice-blue eyes and framing his cheekbones. He has stripped down to an off-white long-sleeved shirt with coffee stains on the front and a pair of black jeans. He sizes Craig up, briefly looking him up and down before he stands to the side, holding the door open with his foot. Craig quickly notes his Red Racer pattern socks before stepping past him over the threshold and making his way into the entryway. He hears the door shut behind him, followed by the quiet rustling of Kenny’s jeans as he walks, and hooks a left, making his way into the kitchen.

All the lights are on, the house is comfortably warm, and there’s a full pot of hot coffee almost finished brewing, which almost makes Craig’s knees give out right then and there. He drops the bag on the marble counter, tugs off his chullo and musses his hair, knocking the keys he forgot he is holding against his head. His bangs tickle his eyelashes; he needs a haircut. Toeing off his vans by the heels, he kicks his shoes into the corner of the room, behind the oak breakfast table. Stepping up to the counter, he moves aside a half-eaten bowl of cheerios and tosses his keys next to the groceries before throwing his jacket over one of the chairs and turning around. Kenny is hanging back in the entryway to the kitchen, backlit by the living room’s standing lamp, a somewhat awkward grin splitting his lips.

“Denver, huh?”

Craig isn’t sure if he’s supposed to explain himself or if Kenny is just making conversation. He can’t quite bring himself to feel defensive, either way. He drops his hat onto the table and leans back against the marble counter, facing Kenny fully and bracing his palms on the edge behind him.

“You put that on?” he asks, nodding towards the coffee. He wonders how Kenny knew he was an evening coffee drinker, if maybe Ruby told him.

Kenny shrugs, which Craig is beginning to understand as ‘yeah but don’t make it a thing.’ Craig does it anyway.

“Thanks.”

“You go to Denver often?” Kenny asks.

It’s Craig’s turn to shrug. He’s only been to Denver a handful of times, but he’s better than most guys with a road map, and sometimes he just needs to empty his gas tank on his way to somewhere no one will find him for the rest of the day. It’s why he bought the mustang; he used all his savings from working part-time for Tweek’s parents for three years (and full-time for Tweek, selling prescriptions) to buy it off a highly generous and retired police officer that lives a few hours east from South Park. It used to be a highway patrol car, but it’s worth the maintenance, and Craig sort of feels he does it justice, with the amount of miles he intends to put on it.

The smile on Kenny’s face takes on a knowing edge, and Craig averts his eyes, turning around and unloading his groceries instead, making as much noise as possible while lifting a plastic bag of zucchini.

“Ruby says you don’t usually take off like that.”

Craig usually ‘takes off’ immediately after dropping Ruby at school and makes it back on time to pick her up from the mall. On days she has cheer practice, Craig is usually home before she even knows he’s gone. He reaches into the bag and pulls out two boxes of angel hair, shaking them like a rattle as he puts them down on the counter.

“You hungry?” Craig asks.

“I’m alright.”

Craig scoffs and nods, unloading the rest of his purchases—a jar of artichoke hearts, a jar of olives, and a jar of minced garlic—and mutters ‘fucking asshole’ under his breath. Kenny probably hasn’t eaten since he stole half of Craig’s rye toast this morning. Craig pauses folding the now empty paper bag into a rectangle, realizing that he hasn’t eaten since this morning, either. He reverses his folding, opens it back up, and then drops the bag off the counter and onto the floor—he’s just going to use it to hold the recycling, anyway.

About to pick up the zucchini and relocate to the sink, Craig freezes as hands come to rest on his hips. His heart rate spikes as he feels the heat coming off of Kenny’s body, radiating out and warming his back. Chapped lips brush the nape of his neck, and Craig grips the edge of the counter, every hair on his body standing up.

“Can I touch you?” Kenny asks, a hot puff of air against his neck.

He already _is_ touching him, but instead of pointing that out Craig focuses on keeping his dick down and nods his head. Kenny presses closer, sliding his hands up the inside of Craig’s shirt.

“I want you like this,” he breathes, lips and teeth working across his neck, urging Craig to tilt his head to the side while digging his fingers into his ribs and pulling him closer, “wanna make you come standing up.”

Craig shivers and ducks his head forward, knuckles turning white from squeezing the counter too hard.

“Why?” Craig didn’t actually mean to ask that question, digs his teeth into his bottom lip as punishment.

Kenny makes a sound somewhere between a sigh, a laugh, and a moan, nuzzling his face into the crook of his neck; Craig feels the teeth of his grin press into his skin and suppresses the urge to fall back against Kenny’s chest, against the one person who inexplicably seems to think he’s worth something.

“You have no idea how bad they all want you, do you?” he asks, and slides his hands back down to Craig’s hips, tugging him back against his pelvis, dragging his mouth up the side of his neck, teasing his ear. “You’re the entire student body’s wet dream. Mysterious, quiet, thoughtful Craig; sarcastic, cool-headed, indifferent. Responsible, mature—you should hear them whine. ‘ _I hear he’s raising his younger sister, that he stopped coming to parties so he could take care of her_. _Stopped getting high, stopped smoking cigarettes, stopped dealing. He used to be so_ **_bad_** _, and now he’s so_ **_good_** _._ ’”

Craig doesn’t really care what Kenny is saying anymore, but he still shakes his head ‘no,’ his thick bangs shielding his eyes from view as he shuts them tightly. Kenny purring into his ear like that is enough to bring his pulse up, and he can feel his member swelling with every second Kenny’s hands are on him.

“It’s true,” Kenny says, briefly catching Craig’s ear between his teeth and eliciting a full-body chill, “you should see their faces when you’re sleeping on the bleachers and your shirt rides up—they all moan over that little freckle on your side…” Kenny drags his left hand up under his shirt and stops just below his navel on the left side, giving it a pinch while speaking softly into his ear. “Right here.”

Craig shakes his head again, furrowing his brows unconsciously. Nobody is moaning over him at school. Kenny is the only person insane enough to want him like this. “You’re so full of shit.”

“You know how much Wendy and Bebe talk about your hair in the summer, when you finally take off that fucking hat?” Kenny laughs, a hollow sound. “You know what they call you? _Emotionally unavailable_.”

Craig grits his teeth and squirms in Kenny’s hold. “Shut up.”

Kenny scoffs and releases his hip in order to gently tug Craig’s head back by his hair, turning Craig’s face into him so he can capture his lips in a slow, provocative kiss, dragging the tip of his tongue across Craig’s bottom lip, nibbling wherever he licks. He drops his other hand down to grab Craig’s groin through his jeans and squeezes, causing Craig’s lungs to contract and his knees to weaken as he transfers nearly all of his weight back against Kenny, releasing his hold on the counter to grip Kenny’s hips behind him. Kenny laughs lightly, adjusting his stance to accommodate the extra weight.

“You know what, though,” Kenny says, and Craig can feel his smirk brush against his lips, “I think I got to you first.”

Swallowing reflexively, Craig lets his head lull to the side as Kenny tightens his hold on his junk, words caught in his throat while Kenny continues to purr in his ear.

“You’ve been mine all this time, haven’t you? You should have told me.”

Craig wants to argue, wants to believe that isn’t true, but all he can think of is how closely he’s watched Kenny since even before middle school, how every day Kenny spends out of his sight is like an itch beneath his skin, unable to be scratched. His mind is a mess. He can’t follow the logic of Kenny’s evolving accusations, and the tension rapidly fleeing his body makes him needy and irritable.

“You done, McCormick?”

Kenny releases his grip on his hair and wraps that arm diagonally across Craig’s front, holding him fast against his chest as he rubs his palm firmly and deliberately against Craig’s hardening length.

“Don’t run,” Kenny breathes, “don’t disappear on me.”

Craig’s throat tightens and prevents him from telling Kenny to go fuck himself, because he isn’t, he’s not _running_. Digging his hands into the fabric of Kenny’s jeans, Craig hesitantly initiates another kiss, brushing his lips over Kenny’s. The blonde accepts, turning Craig’s body around so that they’re chest-to-chest as he grips him by the jaw and kisses him deeply, walking him back until his low back hits the counter, then sliding a leg between his thighs and slotting their hips together. Craig feels slightly light-headed, doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to being touched like this, to feeling another body writhing against his, to having Kenny McCormick sucking on his tongue like he’s getting off on it. They spend minutes grabbing at each other’s clothes and hair and skin, trying to get closer, to taste the other more, to pull just one more moan from the other’s chest.

Craig can feel a serious bruise forming on his low back from the edge of the counter, but the sexual whiplash is far more painful as Kenny suddenly pulls off of him and takes a few steps back, cheeks flushed, light blue eyes fixed on Craig’s no-doubt swollen lips as he wipes his own mouth with the back of his wrist. Craig sags back against the counter, breathing heavily. It isn’t until then that he hears the two sets of footsteps above them, making their way towards the stairs.

“Later,” Kenny says, and from the wild, un-sated look in his eyes, Craig more than believes him.

… 

Craig has been getting better at not panicking every time Kenny leaves the room. Tuesday morning, Craig wakes up alone around 5:30am. The sheets are in disarray, half pulled off the mattress, and Craig grimaces as he realizes they never showered and spent the night bundled in blankets soaked in sweat and other unspeakable fluids that make Craig want to scrub his flesh off with sandpaper. His hair is tangled and sweaty, his skin overheated and sensitive even without having clothes on. Craig sits up with some difficulty, sore in places he’d rather not consider, and looks around the room. Pale blue light filters in through the partially shut blinds and somewhat illuminates the mess of school books and papers on the floor, the peeling Red Racer poster on his wall, and the pile of dirty laundry in the far corner of the room. The air is thick and stagnant—the white ceiling fan having been left off all night—and smells heavily of sex.

Last night, Kenny was restless. No matter how many times they fell back against the blankets, no matter how many times Kenny smiled that slow, lazy smile; no matter how many orgasms he tore from Craig’s aching member; he continued to work his way up and down Craig’s body, biting along his spine, suckling dark bruises into his thighs, spreading his ass and massaging inside him with his tongue until all Craig had the energy to do was fist his hands in the sheets and moan into the mattress. Thankfully the blonde eventually tired himself out and switched his focus, wrapping them up in blankets and holding Craig tightly against his chest, running his hands through his hair and talking about random things that he read about or saw on TV or that happened at school until Craig finally fell asleep.

Kicking off the rest of the blankets, Craig looks over the splotches of dark red and purple littered across his inner thighs, abdomen, and chest, running his fingers over them in fascination. They don’t hurt, but they make him look like a murder victim. Peeling his eyes away, Craig forces himself up out of bed and grabs a pair of boxers off the floor on his way to the bathroom. After using the restroom and taking a quick, utilitarian shower, he pulls on a pair of black jeans that Kenny may or may not have been wearing yesterday and a long-sleeved, dark blue thermal crew-neck shirt. His hair is wet, and the drops of water hitting the back of his neck and falling into his eyes will likely make him catch a cold, if he does what he’s planning on doing, but he opens the blinds of his bedroom window anyway, breath fogging the glass as he glances down the empty street—recently cleared, if the freshly packed snow banks are an indicator—before opening the window to air out the room.

Craig’s thigh muscles strain as he makes his way down the stairs as quietly as he can, jacket in hand, and he takes a moment to be annoyed once again at the notion of someone making him _that_ sore and then disappearing in the morning to do fuck-all-else. Not that he cares. He might care. He does. It pisses him off. His shoes squeak on the wood flooring as he comes to a short stop in the middle of the room as he thinks back to the last time he found Kenny outside his house in the cold; Kenny smokes. Craig pivots and walks around the couch to reach the door to the backyard, which he is relieved, if unsurprised, to find unlocked.

The backyard has a small playground consisting of aluminum monkey bars, a swing, and a play structure made of partially rotted wood. Kenny is lying facedown on top of the bars, a lit cigarette in his right hand. At least he’s wearing a jacket this time.

Craig slogs through the muddy mixture of grass and snow, coming to stand under the bars. Craig hasn’t had a cigarette in months, stopped buying them when he found Ruby playing around in her room with one, putting on makeup and pretending to smoke in the mirror.

Kenny grins when he sees him, face perfectly framed between the bars, and when Craig reaches up to take the cig he relinquishes it easily. 

“You’re up,” Kenny says, a brisk-morning rasp in his voice.

Craig nods and takes a long drag, letting it out slowly as he examines the rips in Kenny’s orange parka, some of them totally inexplicable from normal wear and tear.

“You’ve got wet hair,” says Kenny. His fingers are smudged with dirt where they curl around the metal bars, both arms pillowing his forehead.

“Yeah,” Craig says, letting out another ash-filled exhale, and then after a thought, “I was gonna go find you.”

Kenny stares back at him for a long pause, eyes flicking around Craig’s face, processing. “With wet hair?” he says, finally.

Craig feels an unfamiliar tingle in his chest and cheeks, and it takes him a second to realize it’s some sort of smirk. He lets out a succinct, quiet laugh as his mouth opens up into a fleeting, crooked smile. He hasn’t done that in a long time. It feels unnatural on his face, like he’s out of practice, and he quickly drops the expression, but Kenny stares at him with this half-insane look in his never-been-lighter eyes for a long time after. Kenny does that a lot: looks at him with the eyes of a crazed believer, of someone who’s either witnessed a miracle or endured large amounts of pain.

“You’ve got a lot of crosses in your house,” Kenny says.

Exhaling smoke, Craig nods his head absently. His parents are Roman-Catholic, highly devout.

“You believe in God?” Kenny asks.

Craig looks down at his mud-covered vans, gently shakes a beetle off his shoe. “Maybe.”

A few years ago, Craig supposedly witnessed a miracle in an Italian village while on vacation with his parents. Lightning struck the ground overnight and left a burn mark that looked like the Virgin Mary. His parents spent over thirty minutes with the lighting scar taking pictures, holding their rosaries—there were several people praying. People were claiming to have their ailments cured by touching the ash of a nearby tree, and Craig’s mother waved him closer to try, but he wouldn’t. He found out later that night that his guinea pig Stripe IV had died, and the babysitter had broken Ruby’s arm. Craig has not left Ruby alone overnight, since.

Craig finishes off the cigarette, down to the butt, and drops it in the mud. He’ll clean it up before his parents get back from California. That or it will be covered by snow. He is concerned that his hair is becoming an ice sculpture.

“Let’s go in,” he says, and starts back towards the house. He hears Kenny hit the mud soon after, followed by his clumsy, sloshing steps, and the occasional curse every time he slips on a patch of ice.

… 

They’re late to class again. They walk side-by-side through the parking lot, weaving through cars. Neither of them remembered to bring a backpack—Kenny, because he left it at his actual house, and Craig, because he was too busy convincing Ruby that _no_ he does not smell like cigarettes and _no_ that does not mean she can start smoking and _no_ he is not a ‘hypocritical asshole,’ and _little girls shouldn’t flip people off_ and _yes you are little you weigh like five pounds,_ and _is that all you’re bringing for lunch?_ Karen just sat there quietly and ate cereal with Kenny. 

Craig has a headache before they even get into the building. He forgot his hat at home and doesn’t have a lunch with him. They walk-jog through the empty hallways until they arrive at their political science class, one of two classes that they have together—when Kenny decides to show up, that is. Kenny tugs his rust orange mouth mask down around his neck and flashes him a grin while Craig twists the handle and shoulders the door open. There is a substitute teacher sitting on the desk: a plain woman with brown hair and a green sweater. Craig hesitates in front of the class, not spotting his normal desk in the back corner of the room. In its place is just a red plastic chair from the cafeteria. ‘Fuckers,’ he mouths.

“Names,” she prompts, without looking up from her book.

“McCormick,” Kenny says, stepping up beside Craig, who has gone stiff with irritation.

“Tucker,” he says flatly, and makes eye contact with Stan in the front row. Stan leers back at him, a smug curl to his lips.

“Sit down please,” she drones, and turns another page of her book.

There is only one other seat available: in the front row, between Stan and Butters.

Craig stifles the brief moment of panic, breathes through the anxiety of everyone’s eyes slowly turning to him the longer he stands here trying to decide what the right course of action is.

“You take it,” Craig says to Kenny.

When the blonde looks back at him with an eyebrow raised, Craig shakes his head— _Don’t ask—_ and quietly walks to the back of the room to take his replacement seat.

… 

Craig feels sort of bad about ignoring his friends’ conversation to stare across the hall at Kenny McCormick drinking from a water fountain, but he does this thing where he pauses between drinks to lick his lips and his throat contracts so nicely, and it’s almost lunch period and so far he’s still _here_. Craig is sort of impressed by this, had forgotten what it’s like to stare at the back of Kenny’s head during Chemistry Lab. It’s nice.

“Aw man, if I had Christmas Zombie Blizzard Attack Five I’d be so happy,” says Clyde, nose buried in his locker while he looks for his favorite mechanical pencil.

Craig pulls his eyes away from Kenny, has his back to his closed locker, his hat pulled all the way down over his ears, and both hands tucked into the large pocket of his blue hoodie. Token is out sick today, but Tweek actually managed to show up for once, even if he looks a little out of his element. He’s standing in front of Craig, periodically looking left and right and down and up and over his shoulder, ‘just in case.’ His green plaid shirt is buttoned lopsidedly, he is gripping his backpack straps so tightly that his knuckles are stark white, and his eyes don’t always blink at the same time. 

“Stan is-sssss been talking sshi-shhhhiiii-it,” says Tweek, and Craig once again wonders what the fuck exactly is wrong with him—it could be a disorder, or all the drugs, or something he hasn’t thought of yet, but it’s so inconsistent that nothing quite makes sense. Sure as hell isn't just a stutter.

“I swear I brought it,” says Clyde, becoming increasingly agitated the longer he spends looking.

Craig’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and checks the caller I.D.: Mom.

“Ouch,” Clyde hisses, pulling his hand out of the locker to massage his palm, holding a half-broken mechanical pencil, “found it.”

Craig’s throat is tight and his head throbs as he pushes off of the lockers and starts walking, gripping the phone in his hand until it aches. He doesn’t bother addressing his friends, their voices muted in his ears by the sound of his breathing, and heads for the bathrooms. He catches Kenny’s eye as he rounds the corner and quickly looks away, counting tiles passing under his feet.

Inside the men’s restroom, he quickly kicks open all four stalls to make sure they are empty before locking the bathroom door and answering the call on its last ring, his back to the door.

“Yeah?”

“Hi hun, you got a minute?”

The feminine chirp of his mother’s voice tightens his chest and makes his palms itch. He hasn’t spoken with her in over a month, feels oddly nervous despite his detachment.

“Uh huh.”

“How do you feel about flying out to California for Christmas?”

Craig’s stomach twists, his heart pounding in time with his headache. He wants to shoot down the idea immediately, but his tongue is caught by the image of Ruby’s disappointed face, opening another UPS Christmas gift from their parents with a box cutter. He stands motionless with his mouth open, unable to speak.

“You there, hun?”

“Yeah,” he grounds out, and it feels like coughing up ice.

There’s a long pause on the other end of the phone, then an exasperated sigh.

“Have you been taking your meds?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says, automatic.

“You fuckin’ lying to me?”

Craig stares at the bathroom wall, the grout surrounding every white tile stained black with age, filth and neglect. A paper towel is hanging from the plastic dispenser by just a corner, barely connected at all, swaying with the ventilation. He hears rustling through the speaker, then a slow breath that he imagines he can feel the heat from through the phone.

“Whatever. Talk to your sister about Christmas for me,” she says, “and for fuck’s sake call your therapist’s office and tell them to stop calling me. I think they have my number instead of yours.”

Craig watches the paper towel writhe, eyes beginning to itch from forgetting to blink. He hasn’t gone to therapy in months, doesn’t really see the point, never wanted to go to begin with. “Okay.”

The click followed by a dial tone echoes in his ear. He leaves the phone by his face, listening. Eventually, he takes a step forward. Flipping the phone shut—the silence thicker in the sudden absence of sound—he approaches the paper towel dispenser. He reaches up, hesitating with his hand about an inch from the paper, then rips it from the towel above it in a quick jerk, watching it fall to the floor and absorb a small puddle, water gently dripping down from the sink.

…

When he exits the bathroom, Kenny is leaning on the wall across from the door and staring. Kenny used to stare at him just like that from across the room at parties, when Craig would be smoking joint after joint and wishing for either a moral constitution or less responsibility or better parents or for someone to kill him in his sleep, and he never knew what it meant. He knows now, though, and it stops him in his tracks, leaves him standing in the middle of the empty hallway like he’s caught in headlights. Kenny’s orange parka is on the floor by his shoes, just to the left of where he’s standing, leaving him in only a white t-shirt and jeans. He tilts his head and smiles that smile that isn’t even happy, is just a face, just something to do with his mouth while he waits. Craig hates it, doesn’t know what to do with an expression like that. It’s an accusation. Kenny’s shoulders are tense, braced for something specific.

“How much do you think I could make selling Effexor and Wellbutrin?” Craig asks, doesn’t have the patience for whatever Kenny was planning on saying. They aren't really in demand, but maybe he could hype them up, somehow.

It catches Kenny off guard. The blonde drops the smile and tucks his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

“The ones in your bathroom?” he asks, and Craig isn’t even mad about it, is finding it more and more difficult to feel slighted by Kenny’s small invasive acts after having had the blonde’s tongue up his ass.

“I don’t know if I should sell them or take them,” he says. His hands are shaking, so he puts them in his hoodie pocket.

“You okay?” Kenny asks, and Craig flinches, loses his thought.

Nobody else comes right out and asks that, not when they mean it. Grocery clerks ask that, when they think you don’t have an answer. He can’t remember the last time one of his friends even asked him a direct question. He looks down at his vans and tries not to feel so many things at once.

“Do you need money?” Kenny’s tone is neutral, nonjudgmental.

“That’s not—” Craig starts, but doesn’t know how to explain, ends up biting the inside of his cheek and keeping his head down. He doesn’t want Kenny to think it’s about not having money—Kenny McCormick, of all people.

The fluorescent above their head is out—or at least almost out. He can still hear it buzzing, along with a few voices bouncing off the walls and around the corner, stragglers postponing stepping foot in their classrooms. His head hurts. He doesn’t want to tell Ruby, doesn’t want to be a shit brother, doesn’t want to go to California, doesn’t want to spend Christmas with his parents, doesn’t want Ruby to be sad but doesn’t want her within a ten mile radius of that woman. None of those things seem to line up right.

“I don’t want to take the pills,” he says, finally, and looks up.

Kenny’s eyes briefly remind Craig of a bird of prey, and it sends chills down his spine. “Okay,” he says, flat, objective.

Craig doesn’t think either of them has blinked in like twenty seconds. “I…” Craig’s mouth has gone dry, and somewhere in the back of his mind he realizes that his legs feel weak. Kenny’s eyes never leave his—never stop asking. It takes his breath away.

Whatever Kenny is looking for, he gets, because he nods and pushes off the wall he’s leaning against, taking his hands out of his pockets and walking up to Craig. He holds Craig by the jaw, fingers cold against his skin, and kisses him once, twice, three times, then drops his hand to press flat against Craig’s abdomen. Craig instinctively flexes under Kenny’s hand and immediately feels stupid for it as Kenny grins against his mouth and pushes him off balance, walking him backward, matching him step for step until Craig’s back hits the wall next to the bathroom door. Craig hesitantly slides his hands out of his hoodie pocket and returns the kiss, holding onto Kenny’s hips, every breath loud in his ears, amplified by the fact that anyone could turn the corner and see them, that Stan could round the corner and see Craig letting Kenny do _this_ and know _everything,_ all at once.

It’s enough for Craig to gently push Kenny’s hips away, but the blonde doesn’t seem to mind, just flashes a grin and tugs the bathroom door open, holding it ajar with a flexed foot. Craig’s eyes linger on the peeling rubber of Kenny’s black shoes while he quickly considers his options. The bathroom is a solid step up from the hallway. Or, it is so long as they lock the door—but if they lock the door, then any student who tries to get in might alert an authority, e.g. a teacher or janitor, who will then unlock the bathroom door and see…whatever it is that Kenny has in mind. But if they _don’t_ lock the door then they still have a similar-if-less-bureaucratic problem, and the further Kenny gets into the doorway the more Craig is starting to think that school is possibly the worst place to give Kenny McCormick free reign, considering the mess it made last time.

“No,” Craig says, and wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist.

Kenny’s grin disappears as he presses his back to the door and tilts his head, hair falling forward over his cheekbones. “You want to go to class?”

Craig really doesn’t want to go to class. “Maybe,” he says. 

“But you’re upset,” Kenny says, and Craig marvels at how unsettling Kenny’s curiosity can be, how it can make him feel like a stain under a microscope.

“I’m not,” Craig says, glances down the empty hallway to be sure, and then quietly, “I mean I am, but not…”

Craig bites the inside of his cheek and ducks his head, feeling a little sick. His mother does upset him. A lot. But Kenny McCormick knows more about parents who let you down than Craig will ever know, more than anyone should ever, ever know, and Craig isn’t about to start that pissing contest, knows he would only be left feeling spoiled and foolish. Craig takes a reflexive step backward, and then freezes in place as Kenny extends his hand to him again, expression unnaturally neutral.

“You’re upset. It’s okay.”

As ten, twenty seconds go by, Kenny’s expression doesn’t change, and Craig only has to take one small step back to see the other’s eyelids lower with something like sympathy, which is the worst, and then Craig is brushing Kenny’s hand to the side and shoving him into the bathroom himself, lightning running up and down his spine.

“Alright, McCormick. Impress me.”

…

“This is so dumb,” Ruby says, tossing another piece of popcorn at Kenny’s mouth and missing.

Kenny barely twitches when the kernel bounces off his forehead and lands under the coffee table. Craig makes a note to himself to vacuum as soon as the movie ends and puts his hand on Ruby’s head. Ever since Kenny’s words about Craig acting like he’s never been touched, Craig has been more conscious of his physical interactions—or more realistically, about counting the touches he gives and receives to make sure he fits in at least eight per day. If Ruby minds, she doesn’t say, just shifts around on the carpet to lean into his hand. 

Karen is taking a nap upstairs so, after a brief argument in which Ruby tried to convince Kenny to teach her to drive and Kenny almost relented before Craig punched him in the arm, they decided to watch the new _Annabelle_ film—although Craig is starting to think none of them even really like horror. It’s not even that it disturbs Craig, but the situations or the characters or just something about them frustrates him, and he’ll occasionally end up having that dream where he is opening a letter, but the envelope has infinite envelopes inside it, and Craig painstakingly opens them all, collecting paper cuts all over his fingers as he goes, bleeding vibrant red onto the paper, watching his blood congeal on the untouched glue of the seal.

But Craig is comfortable with this arrangement, huddled together in the living room, the late afternoon light streaming in through the windows and casting an irritating glare over the TV screen that obscures characters’ faces at crucial moments. 

Kenny sits upright with his arms spread out on the back of the couch, and Craig lies on his side with his legs over Kenny’s lap, paying more attention to Ruby on the floor in front of him, her knees tucked up under her chin, than the movie. Craig brushes his fingers through her hair as a little girl in a wheelchair rolls uncontrollably into a wooden shed on-screen. Ignoring the screaming coming from the television, Craig stares at the fine strands of strawberry blonde flowing between his fingers and feels a pang of melancholy, remembering a time not so long ago when she got tired of the pigtails their mother liked and asked him to braid her hair. He told her ‘no’ at first, but asked the girls at school to teach him anyway. For almost a year straight, he would get up early and sit with her at the kitchen table or on the couch, carefully overlapping sections of hair until her hair was one long, silky rope ending just past her shoulder blades. But then she went into high school and stopped wanting braids and now Craig lingers by the coffee machine in the morning and argues with her about how long her skirts should be.

Craig frowns and rubs a strand of blonde hair between his thumb and forefinger. He sort of wishes she would ask him to braid it again. Fingers pinching his calf muscle draw his attention over to Kenny’s smirking face, although something about the expression looks strained. Kenny is wearing Craig’s chullo. Craig makes a face of distaste. He doesn’t wash that hat often, and he finds it disturbing that Kenny either doesn’t realize how gross it is or simply doesn’t care.

“I missed a call from mom today,” Ruby says, suddenly.

Craig’s eyes snap to the back of Ruby’s head, his hand stilling in her hair. “Yeah?”

Ruby hums an affirmative. “She didn’t leave a message.”

On screen, the visage of a child appears on the floor of the shed and crawls toward the girl, causing her to scream.

Craig drops his hand onto Ruby’s shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. His voice rasps, but he thinks it isn’t noticeable. “Don’t worry about it.”

Ruby watches the screen with drowsy eyes; her and Karen were up late last night playing card games. “Okay.”

Glancing sideways at Kenny, who watches Craig with eyes such a pale shade of blue that they almost scare him, Craig feels guilt poke and prod at his chest because Kenny has that _look_ on his face—the one that says, ‘I don’t know what you’re not saying but you should say it now’; the one that _questions_. Ruby turns to look at him and Craig eases his hold on her shoulder, realizing how hard he was squeezing.

The words escape his mouth before he can think too much about how to phrase it. “Do you want to spend Christmas in California?” Craig asks, staring down a patch of dry skin near the corner of Kenny’s mouth, “With mom and dad?”

When she doesn’t immediately respond, he turns his head and seeks out her eyes only to find her lips curling up slightly and her eyes cast down, watching her hands as she fiddles with a bit of lint stuck to her lime green sock.

“Not really,” she says simply, and it’s so unexpected that Craig almost doesn’t hear it.

“Are you sure?” He hates that he gives her a chance to change her mind, but he hates the fact he would still rather keep her here with him, away from them, even if she wants to go.

She shakes her head slightly and rests a hand over his on her shoulder. “I like our Christmases,” she says, softly, and Craig doesn’t overthink the way his lungs unclench, just slowly turns his eyes back to the screen in time to watch the ghost-child puke into the mouth of the little girl, making sickening gurgling sounds. _Gross_.

Kenny has been uncharacteristically quiet, but any hope Craig had of Kenny not paying attention is dashed by the soothing way he begins massaging his calves, as if to say ‘You did good,’ and if that doesn’t piss Craig off then he’s starting to think he’s developing an immunity. 

“If I ever break my legs and need a wheelchair, don’t leave me alone in a haunted house,” Ruby says, and shoves a handful of popcorn in her mouth.

“You’re not breaking anything,” Craig says, too quickly.

He doesn’t mean to sound so tense. He can feel Kenny’s eyes on him, still pushing, always pushing, always curious. _Nosey_.

Unfazed, Ruby kicks her legs out in front of her and curses when she accidentally hits her shin on the coffee table. Craig ruffles her hair.

“Moron.”

“Asshole,” she counters, and Craig’s mouth twitches.

“I’m sort of surprised you let your sister watch R-rated movies,” Kenny chimes in, and Ruby throws another piece of popcorn at him, and Craig is starting to think she’s missing his mouth on purpose. It hits Kenny in the eye—“Oi!”—and Kenny picks it up off his lap and flicks it back at her.

Craig shrugs, lying all the way down on the couch and looking up at the ceiling. There’s a thin crack starting. He’ll need to get up on a ladder later and check if it’s just the paint or something structural. 

“Kids younger than her have fought in wars, historically speaking,” he says. Kenny’s silence speaks for itself. “She doesn’t get scared,” he adds, annoyed at having to justify his parenting— _parenting_ ? Since when has he been her _parent_? She's sixteen, not twelve. 

Sighing heavily, Craig massages the muscles around his eyes. “She can watch what she wants, she knows her limits.”

“Ha. Suck it, Blondie.”

Craig doesn’t see her throw the next kernel, but he feels the couch shake as Kenny tries to catch it. Maybe next time he’ll get lucky and it’ll take out one of Kenny’s eyes, give Craig a fair chance during their next disagreement. Another scream rises from the television, and Craig doesn’t jump. He does not. Regardless of whatever Kenny is laughing at. Without making the effort and turning onto his side again, Craig drops his hand off the couch, blindly aiming to put his hand back on Ruby’s head, but his hand hits the skin of her throat. He tries to correct, but is stopped by her own hand, pressing his to her skin. Craig feels kind of weird about it, but Ruby seems to be minding her own business, eating popcorn, and he’s trying not to discourage people from touching him anymore. He can feel her chew and swallow against his palm. Which is also weird, but fine. It isn’t until he feels Kenny’s fingers digging painfully into his calf muscle that he feels the need to sit up slightly.

Kenny is staring at him. That’s nothing new. Other than the hat. But this time his eyes are like sheets of ice, like he’s reevaluating Craig starting from the very beginning, and it feels like being dumped off the edge of the Titanic. It takes him a moment to trace his line of sight to where Ruby holds Craig’s hand loosely around her neck, and suddenly the way Kenny is looking at him makes it feel wrong, somehow. Like he’s done something shameful without even knowing. Gently retrieving his hand from Ruby’s grasp, who doesn’t notice or care aside from giving a slight squeeze before letting his hand go, Craig waits for Kenny to go back to normal so Craig can feel normal, but it doesn’t happen. The screams go on and on in the background, and Kenny just keeps staring, until Craig rolls his eyes and lays back on the couch again, this time keeping his hand to himself. Maybe next time Craig will put on a comedy. If not to make Craig laugh, since not much ever does, at least it will get Kenny smiling, even if it’s no longer at Craig.


End file.
